In the prognosticative piece we delved into Warren Cromartie's Manifesto ("Montreal is a Five Tool City") on the return of the Expos...or I guess it's more of a Cro-Mafesto. Within the Cro-Mafesto we focused on the 4th point of the pentagon-pointed five-tools which make up this wonderful baseball city in my heavily speculative article.
Today we shall look into another piece of the pentagonal "5 Tools" (as such). We shall be looking into the "Passionate Fan Base" tool.
The other sports fan bases in this city we already know about. Not one person hasn't heard of the Montreal Canadiens hockey club. The Montreal Canadiens fans look at their city's hockey team as the life and essence of the city itself almost.
We wish to focus on the rabid fan base of baseball fans only.
A contingent of 1,000 Expos fans comprised of hardcore fans, who never stopped believing in their team, dawned Expos gear and showed their colors at a Toronto Blue Jays game. Now granted 1,000 is not a huge number but it's only the tip of the ice berg of the rabid base that lies underneath the surface.
Last week, the New York Mets and Toronto Bluejays announced two exhibition games will be hosted at Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Within a week they have sold over 80,000 tickets for these games. Montreal wants baseball back. That's 80K tickets purchased by Montreal's fan base for exhibition (not even regular season) games. It seems they are serious about getting a team back.
That's how it starts...
A guy like Cromartie convinces everyone it's possible...The "baby steps" have been set in motion. The ball gets rollin' and 1,000 people are convinced it's possible and crash a game in full Expos regalia...The Kool-Aid starts gettin' stirred up quick.
Then 80,000 people catch the Baseball Fever...Something's brewin' that's what it's doin'.
The wheels are now in motion...will 4 million people in the greater Montreal area catch the Fever? My guess is...Yes, it is most likely.
Vlad was "The Last Mohican" of the Expos...or maybe Vlad was the "Last Samurai"...No, Vlad was the "Last Dragon..."
You aaaaaaare the Last Draaaaaaagon!
Out of all the Heroes, Legends, and Diamond Kings...Vladimir was Montreal's last Diamond King, our Last Dragon.
When many of the Montreal's Diamond Kings careers came to a close they ventured back here to receive their curtain call. Take the dearly departed, but still awesome in all our hearts, Gary Carter...
Yet, with the Expos no longer around...there will be no curtain call for our Last Dragon. Vladimir Guerrero won't get to double over Andre Dawson's head in right, or draw a walk while 55,000 fans stand and cheer during his entire at-bat like they did for Raines. If the Expos were still here Vlad would have been on the 2013 roster and he would have had an unforgettable curtain call at Olympic Stadium.
I will say this...Vlad was the most electrifying athlete who EVER played in this city. His talent was unfathomable.
The rumored story of how Vlad ended up here was that Tommy Lasorda kicked him off the Dodgers because Vladdy showed up with two different pairs of moldy old shoes and Tommy judged the book by the cover and assumed he was a bum. Felipe Alou recognized the diamond in the rough and invited the skinny awkard lanky kid to spring training.
He was the strong silent type. Never ever speaking. The only time anyone heard him speak was at the last game he played in an Expos uniform when he took a microphone onto the field and simply stated...
"Merci Beaucoups"
Everything had to epic like that with this guy.
Happy trails Vladdy, it is too bad that you didn't get a send off. If anyone deserved one it was you.
Like the seasons, love will come and go If it's right, you'll automatically know The world of mystery exists only in your head When you become one with yourself The wall will fall
There's a power deep inside you, an inner strength You'll find in time of need.
Spring is here, and Warren Cromartie is on the radio and t.v. talkin' Expos so now I'm all happy today. I find I'm writing a lot about baseball again in the last little while (WBC, steroids, etc.). Baseball is something I like and it's nice and positive to write about it. I'm gonna try and write about more positive things (science, sports) in the future and try and stay away from politics. You get too negative when you get dragged into the drudges of the political world.
Larry Walker
I was listening to an interview on Mitch Melnick's TSN 690 radio program today and he was talkin' to Cro. The Cro was mentioning that his Montreal Baseball Project is well into Phase II as he is launching an economic forum/feasibility study, and he also mentioned that next year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1994 Montreal Expos team. Many know the history of that and really believe the disbanding of that squadron was the first step in the death of the Expos.
To mark the anniversary of the 1994 Expos, Montreal Baseball Project is re-uniting the team for some sort of festivity here in the city. He mentioned Pedro, Moises, Grip, Felipe, and others are gonna be part of it. I hope others show up too. Mitch asked him about Larry Walker and neither thought he would come. Cro proceeded to say that if anyone is in touch with Larry to call [him] homie, and let him know they want him there for the reunion.
Mitch mentioned that relations with Walker and Montreal are somewhat sour and I want to try and explain why that is.
Rabbit Ears
Warren mentioned that "players have rabbit ears" and I want to to try and elaborate on what he was saying.
Remember that episode of the Simpson's where Homer gets benched for Darryl Strawberry and Bart sits behind him in the rightfield stands and heckles the Straw until he sheds a single tear? That's rabbit ears.
In fact, Bart (or whichever writer wrote that bit) did not invent the "Dar-ryl" chant...fans at Fenway did (as evidenced by this video care of MLB.com):
Dar-ryyyyyyl, Dar-ryyyyyyyl.
Okay. Now, before moving on to how this relates to Larry Walker, I want to first talk about another Expos outfielder.
In the mid 1980s, the owners of each Major League club colluded to agree to not sign any free agents in order to drive their salaries down. Expos outfielder Andre Dawson left the Expos and signed a blank cheque with the Cubs. The fans had no way of knowing about the collusion that was going on, and when Dawson came to play against the Expos with the Cubs in 1987...the Expos fans booed him. The fans should have been booing the owners for colluding but with the information they had, they could only believe that Dawson jumped ship and thus they booed him under false pretenses.
Now, the same would occur in 1995...to one Larry Kenneth Robert Walker. After 1994, Claude Brochu dismantled the Expos following the cancelled season. Walker, Grissom, Wetteland, and others were traded or released. Larry Walker was let go and signed on with the Colorado Rockies. We now know that Walker wanted to take much less money to remain in Montreal but was still let go by the team in order to cut salaries. To the fans however, who had already been shafted out of a playoff berth for the first time in over a decade, were already understandably bitter and were very unfriendly to Larry when he came to Olympic Stadium to play against the Expos as a Rockie in the 1995 season. They booed the heck out of him, heckled him every at bat, and the fans in the right field bleachers gave him the Dar-yyyyl treatment something fierce.
So when Cro mentioned that "players have rabbit ears" that's what he was talking about. The fans gave Walker the Dar-yyyl treatment but who could blame them? Just like in 1987 when they booed Dawson, the fans had no idea of the back office politics going on which led to those players leaving the club. All they knew in '95 was that they just had their World Series contender team dismantled and were as bitter as hell. Once again the jeers were undeserved by the outfielder yet it is easy to see why the fans did it. How were they to know otherwise?
My sources for these two events are: I was present at the Walker "Dar-yyyl" game and very clearly remember the length and intensity of the jeers directed at Walker. While my source for the 1987 Dawson boos comes from a very reliable Expos historian (Wayne).
So,
The Walker and Montreal sourness is from a big misunderstanding by the fans, that's all. The 1995 season started on an incredibly sour note here and I don't think anyone can blame the fans for being pessimistic and quite angry that season.
It would be cool if Larry attends the Montreal Baseball Project's 1994 team reunion next summer.
This time of year (hall of fame votin' time) always makes me start thinking about Expos again. There's only one legend left for the Hall of Fame now but I still wait for the vote every year. I hope Rock makes it in soon.
Some time ago, I wrote about the Warren Cromartie led Montreal Baseball Project and on the righteous effort to revive the Montreal Expos baseball team:
Re-reading it now, I said some dumb things. I really thought that the possibility of getting another Major League team here was slim and was talking in that article about maybe a Can-Am team or something. I think it was the fact that when baseball left Montreal the minority shareholders sued the league and I'm sure that must have left some bad blood between the city and the league.
However, now that Loria has gutted the Miami Marlins and screwed Miami taxpayers out of about 500 million bucks...people may be looking at the Montreal situation differently. Maybe people are now wondering, "hey, did Loria screw over Montreal too?"
Even that Taiwan news channel that takes popular news stories and turns them into computer animations jumped on the Loria hate-train,
I think the whole baseball world is now starting to understand why the minority Expos shareholders sued the league in a RICO suit. It's because this guy Loria is a real art-dealin' trickster something fierce, I tell you.
I think now that Montreal can get a Major League team back and no one says it better than Cromartie himself on his blog at www.warrrencromartie.com,
"And, by no means am I trying to be a hero. I’m just trying to do the right thing. I know for a fact that Montreal is not an independent league town, and that it’s not a minor league town, either. Montreal is a Major League town. Montreal has a population close to 4 million people." -Cro
He goes on to elegantly state that,
"And so, as someone who played for the Expos and played in the city of Montreal, who was proud to play for the Expos and who loves the city as much as I do, I’ve taken the bull by the horns and (rather than man up I’ve) Expo’d up: I’ve decided to try and do something about bringing baseball back to the city of Montreal." -Cro
Yes, the Cro has "Expo'd up" and everyone knows when someone Expo's Up...serious business is afoot! I can't help but think of a superman type scenario where in order to indeed "Expo Up" you'd need to run into an empty telephone booth, rip open your business shirt to reveal the Expos uniform waiting underneath, and then fly through the air at top speed of 100-200 miles per hour.
In another article, he claims that Montreal is a "five-tool" city for the following reasons:
"1. HistoryMontreal has a very long and rich baseball history. The Royals played their first season in the Eastern League in 1897. In 1939, the Royals became the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm club and it’s here that Jackie Robinson played the 1946 season one year before breaking the color barrier in the Major Leagues. The city embraced Robinson in the only year he was here, and after he helped the Royals win the Junior World Series, fans stormed the field to carry him on their shoulders. You can go to the corner of Delorimier Avenue and Ontario Street East, and stand in the place where old Delormier Stadium stood, in the place where some of baseball’s elite, like Don Drysdale, Roberto Clemente, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Tommy Lasorda, and Sparky Anderson, made their marks as very young men. It was only fitting then, that in 1969, Montreal was awarded the first ever Major League franchise outside the United States. So many great players wore Expos’ uniforms over the years; Hall of Famers Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, and possible future Hall of Famers Tim Raines, Pedro Martinez, and Vladimir Guerrero are just the tip of the iceberg. And, as I well know and am so proud of, in 1981, the Montreal Expos were the first non-U.S. team to make it to the postseason.
2. Population
Montreal is a big city with a very large population. According to a Conference Board of Canada report prepared in 2011, one of the “market pillars” needed to support a Major League Baseball team is a population of at least 2.5 million people. Montreal has almost 4 million people.
3. Passionate fan base
Montreal is known the world over for its multitude of festivals that are so well-attended each and every year. The Montreal Canadiens are an enormous success in terms of attendance, as are the Canadian Football League’s Alouettes, and the Impact, who have graduated this year to Major League Soccer. Montrealers are passionate about their teams and their events and I know they miss baseball dearly.
4. Corporate presence
By the same Conference Board report, we know that Montreal is home to 98 of Canada’s 800 biggest companies. Only Toronto and Calgary have more. And, with the Canadian dollar at or near par with the U.S. dollar – something that was far from the case throughout the history of the Expos – we are definitely living in a new and brighter era.
5. Me
Hey, Montreal’s got Warren Cromartie! A passionate former Expo who wants dearly to bring the team back to Montreal and put things right. Okay, I admit, Warren Cromartie alone cannot bring back Major League baseball to Montreal. Warren Cromartie alone cannot build a stadium fit for the new Expos. But Warren Cromarite, together with the fans and business interests, is going to try his damndest to do it!
The key tool I will be focusing on in this article's prognostications/speculations is the 4th tool, that of corporate presence and thus the possible future shareholders of a revived Expos team.
The Best Possible Scenarios
1. Power Corp.
This is sort of a pipe-dream, this company has never invested in local sports franchises and I doubt it ever will. It's kind of the greedy stereotyped conglomerate you'd see as the villain inmovies.
Though, if they were in fact the owners (an 100% unlikely a scenario mind you) the Expos would have some pretty deep pockets. Power Corp. generates about 1 billion dollars a year in transparent on-shore reported net profits (wow). The average MLB team payroll is about 80 million bucks...which would cut into only 8% of their yearly earnings to field a competitive baseball team in their home city.
Obviously these guys would be in it for the profit and not the civic pride of winning a World Series, so let's crunch some more numbers here to arrive at some tangible profits,
According to Forbes magazine, the yearly revenue generated by a major league baseball franchise is in between 148 million (Marlins) and 439 million (Yankees).
Our Olympic Stadium is fully payed for now, meaning the main operating expense is the player payroll, which is on average about 80 million. So, if it's done successfully and the team is competitive and profitable...they can make good money on this venture.
2. Québecor Media
This would be a far more likely scenario. Just like Rogers (the media conglomerate who owns the Jays), Québcor is a media conglomerate based in Montreal.
Since it also owns Sun Media which is a nationwide tabloid network and publication, it would have nationwide visibility for the team.
One of the things that really cut into the Expos profits was giving up the national broadcasting rights. The only data I have on hand (print, no link) is from 1982, when they were getting about 5 million in local broadcast revenues and about 2 million in national revenues. I guess at some point they thought they didn't need to keep the national rights and let the Jays have them. Which was not smart, because broadcasting revenues in baseball skyrocketed exponentially over the last 30 years and that 2 million they gave up on is worth a whole lot more to Rogers now.
Airing Expos games nationwide on Sun could create unwanted competition and maybe some sort of agreement between Rogers and Québecor on baseball airing rights. It could be in their best interests to work out a deal where Sportsnet would broadcast both Jays and Expos games (SP-1 for Jays, SP-2 for Expos) and create a nationwide two-team fever/buzz generating system.
Sun is a tabloid that thrives on scandals and sensationalism. I wonder if their ability to fan flames and create fervor amongst readers/viewers could translate into optimum buzz generation for a sports franchise.
3. Molson
Beer. Man do they make money at parks on the beers. I go to Alouettes games sometimes and drink like 12 beers and they cost like 9 bucks each. That's $108 right there.
This would also mean that the Expos and Canadiens would be under the same banner and could merge marketing strategies (winter and summer would then be all around beer sellin' season for Molson) and they would not be in direct competition when the two teams overlap schedules (only briefly during the end of hockey season and maybe at the start).
I read in Bill Veeck's book that he made so much more money off of concessions than he did off tickets any day of the week (even Sunday). That's why he made so many free night gimmicks and give-a-ways. He'd give tickets away for free just to fill the stadium (anyone remember $5 night at the Big O near the end times? You'd get 20-30K on that night and they'd all buy concessions).
There's 60K seats in the Big O, and what I could suggest for a Molson operated franchise is to make the ENTIRE upper deck FREE. Free as night, free as day, and free as AIR. You'd pay good money to sit in the 30,000 good field level seats, but the tickets for the other shitty nose-bleed upper-decker 30,000 seats would be handed out at the door for FREE! We'd call it the Les Expo Super Fan Club Zone and it would have cheerleaders and a beer vendor at every section. Better yet...the cheerleaders would SELL THE BEER! I buy beer when I don't even want it all the time just because the waitress is hot.
Say even 5,000 free loaders show up to hang out in the upper deck, if only half of them even bought beer at like 7 bucks a unit, and a fourth of them bought many beers (i.e. 4). You're talking a supplemental per game income of $48,000 which over 81 games would equate to just about 4 million dollars to add to your gate and regular concession revenues.
Could a Les Expos Super Fan Club Zone evolve into the summer pre-party hot spot for young people? If it's done right then I wouldn't see why it couldn't. If it does you could get even 20,000 beer drinking freeloaders per game, which would bring in a prognosticated $192,000 per game...and supplement 16 million dollars of income per season. Yes, 16 million dollars on giving away FREE TICKETS if it is done correctly and the hottest of chicks are found to hawk the beers.
To contrast the party zone, another area of the field (third base side facing the bullpen) will be quartered off as the Extreme Family Values Zone where kids under 6 and little babies can accompany their parents for free (at a maximum of 3 child units per family).
Yes, the key to a Molson run Expos team would be to take advantage of the space in the Big O to get maximum people in the stadium to purchase maximum concessions.
The Pen-Ultimate...(wait...no) The Super-Ultimate Case Scenario
The share-holder percentages of my prognosticatedGolden-Super-Ultimate Case Scenario would be the following:
Power Corp: 33.333333334%
Québecor: 33.3333333334%
Molson: 33.3333333334%
Within this tri-forced tri-umvirate lies the ultimate balance in Expos shareholding ownership. Each point of the Expos-World-Series-Profit-Generating-Dynasty-Making Tri-Umvirate will take a key role in the on going and sustainable success of the franchise.
1. Power Corp. will cover the payroll and player salaries.
2.Québecorwould need to create a nationwide tabloid saturated buzz-generating Believer Fever which would subsequently be caught by human after human in successive turn. The ad campaigns must generate extreme hype, and the resulting media-saturated Expos fever should spread province-to-province, state-to-state, and country-to-country like WILD FIRE.
3. Molson must transform the Upper Deck Nose Bleeds into a veritable party central. This would be easier with a downtown park where the post-game exiting fans could file out and go straight to St. Catherines or St. Laurent, but at present state in any case the metro ride from Pie-IX to downtown will probably be pretty intense. Molson must do this by maximizing their beer vending and beer advertising capabilities and bring them to new levels. All kinds of gimmicks! Stuff like specialguest celebrity beer vendors even.
and finally...
4. Warren Cromartie should be given the honorific title of President of the Expos and be the iconic face of the New Generation Expos.
oh and...
5. Gary Carter should be posthumously honored as Guardian Deity of the Expos, and a statue should be put in center field of him looking down on the field to protect the Expos from misfortune of all kinds.
Conclusion
You can call me crazy, you can call me a dreamer, you can call me weird, you can call me dumb, you can call me Ray, or you can even call me Jay, but one thing you can never say about me is that my prognostications are fundamentally unsound...
....because my prognostications are usually fundamentally sound.
(Edit: APRIL 9 of 2013): This article gets some decent hits still (but a lot of spam-bot advertisement comments). For any new hits to this article I'd like to spruce it up a bit....so here's some Cro-bama posters for all you readers (unless you're spam bots then nevermind):
The Spaceman Bill Lee called him "The Moderator of the Conclave," and the leader of the Montreal Expos teams of the glorious era of the late seventies and early eighties. This man in 1979 proclaimed that the Montreal Expos were "for real" and "as serious as a heart attack."
Who is he?
The legend...Warren Cromartie. Who else?
Today on April the 4th of 2012, almost 34 years after proclaiming to the world that the Montreal Expos are for real, he's back to let 'em know that even though they are gone...they are certainly not forgotten and may one day live once more. The Cro came back to Montreal to announce that he is heading a group who's purpose is to revive the Expos.
Why do I care? Because baseball reminds me of a simpler time. When April came around in the old days it used to mean that I got to play baseball all day, watch Expos games at night, then read the boxscores in the mornings and absorb all those wonderful numbers into my brain. Now, I work all day long and don't have time to play baseball, the Expos are dead, and in the morning there's nothing to look at the in paper except boring political and business articles...no more boxscores. To each his own, you know? It reminds of a simpler time and it gave me something to believe in.
Circa 1979.....for real
Cro stated in his press conference that this has got to start at the "grassroots" and that it's gonna take a "unit" of people with a positive attitude. It's a baby-step but everything has to start somewhere...and if I may say, this baby-step is as serious as a heart attack!
The Montreal Baseball Project will be holding a charity golf tournament on June 15th, 2012 for the Cedar Cancer Institute and the MUHC in memory of the Great Legend Gary Carter who passed away earlier this year from brain cancer. The game will feature many of Carter's teammates of the 1981 Expos (including the Great Legend Tim Raines and the Great Legend Andre Dawson).
My Thoughts
People are saying that Montreal is too accustomed to big league attractions and will never support a minor league team, but I'm not sure about that. I think a minor league team could work here. Personally, I would use some Bill Veeck-ian gimmicks to sell the game. I would keep open 4 of the 25 roster spots for the following:
A) Two Quebec born players in order to have hometown players on the team for the fans to support.
B) Two women players in order to break some ground (this gimmick will get some headlines for sure)
The 21 roster slot system won't fly with the MLB players union, so a triple-A team (or any other MLB affiliated team) is not in the picture. The best idea would be a Can-Am team, where the Quebec Capitales play and thus a rivalry can start between Quebec City and Montreal. With a Can-Am team the 4 reserved roster slots for seat-filling reasons will be able to fly.
Who is the prime candidate to be the female star of the Montreal's hypothetical Can-Am team?
Eri Yoshida
Yoshida is a side-arm knuckleballer from Yokohama, Japan. She has pitched professionally against men on several occasions, including as a member of the Kobe 9 in Japan, and the Chico Outlaws in the U.S of A.
She has trained extensively with knuckleball sages such as Tim Wakefield and seems to have perfected the technique at a very young age. Some claim she has mastered 36 divine deception techniques and 72 earthly ones, giving her more than enough deceptive notes in her pitch sequence to fool almost any batter.
Would Yoshida sign on to pitch for a Cromartie led Montreal minor league franchise? Yes, she would in a heart beat. The Cro is a MUCH BIGGER legend in Japan than he is in North America and is a baseball icon over there.
I think women would flock to see her throw and make men look foolish with her deceptive knuckleball, I think she would be an instant-star in Montreal.
Montreal was where the first black player gained confidence to smash the color barrier in Major League Baseball...could it be the place where the first woman player gains the confidence to strike out men in Major League Baseball? I don't know...I think it would sell tickets though.
